TRSTD 09

Chapter 09

“I told you not to come ever again.”

A low, sunken voice bounced off the walls and echoed inside the room.

“Yes, but since I’ve come this way, I’m paying my respects.”

Arina brought her hands neatly together and bowed her head slightly. At the unfamiliar greeting, Lucius’s handsome face crumpled mercilessly.

Raising his upper body halfway, he threw a pillow toward her.

Dodging it lightly, Arina calmly picked up the pillow and placed it at the edge of the bed.

“You know very well that Your Lordship is in no position to push me away right now.”

“Are you threatening me right now?”

“I am telling you the truth.”

“I don’t need your help or anything like that. So get out! Disappear from before my eyes!”

Even while shouting like that, as if he had swallowed the wrong way, he coughed harshly.

Arina hurried forward and placed her hand on his back. As a white light flashed, the coughing sound vanished.

“Please.”

He muttered in a voice whose momentum had dropped a notch compared to before.

“Leave me alone.”

Curling his body into a ball, he did not bat away the hand resting on his body. However, thinking she shouldn’t keep touching him like this, Arina obediently withdrew her hand.

Looking as though he had been pieced together from shards of broken glass, he looked extremely precarious.

Even so, Arina did not back down and calmly continued the conversation.

“Rejecting me like this, why did you keep replying to the letters I sent until now?”

“I didn’t do it. Someone in the family sent them in my place to keep the engagement going.”

“…!”

At that moment, Arina’s heart sank.

She hadn’t expected that tiny flower, the only thing she had relied upon in her past life, to be denied so easily.

Why hadn’t she ever thought that someone else might have sent them in his place?

Because he kept sending them even after the engagement was broken?

Or because…

“You gave me a necklace in the future. A sapphire necklace as beautiful as a mermaid’s tears.”

As Arina urgently retorted, the sound of a sneer echoed quietly through the darkness.

“That must be an imaginary version of me you created.”

“If it was really just imagination, how could I have come right on time for the day the Young Lord went berserk?”

With the continuous denials, irritation began to creep up on Arina, and her words came out sharply.

“That was not just my delusion, but a revelation from God commanding me to save you.”

At the word ‘God’, his shoulder flinched greatly.

“You were probably sent to execute me, not to save me.”

“Our mission is to condemn evil, but this time, it is to save the Young Lord…”

At this, Lucius abruptly jerked his head up and cut her off.

“That damn God, God!”

“……”

“That bloody God made me into a monster like this! There’s no way such a being would save me!”

A cry filled with resentment rebuked her.

Arina, who had been quietly listening to the sounds denying and reviling God, let out a quiet breath.

This is dangerous as it is.

As his emotions grew intense, demonic aura was leaking out from his body.

The dam that was barely maintaining its form was about to collapse.

If she didn’t calm him down, a tragedy just like before would definitely happen.

Arina quickly racked her brain. Words came to mind, but whether they would actually work was an unknown.

Still, it would be better than just watching like this.

“No. You became like this because of your ancestors who were demons, not because of God’s will.”

Lucius, who had been burning with anger, suddenly felt his head cool down at those absurd words.

“Is that something a member of the clergy should say?”

“Clergy members know how to speak logically, too. They just choose not to.”

“……”

Feeling that she wasn’t even worth talking to, he shut his mouth. Arina’s eyes narrowed. Somehow, it felt like looking at him when he was ten years old, making the corners of her lips twitch.

The habit of turning his body away whenever he didn’t want to talk to someone seemed to remain the same.

“This has been the most useless time of my life. I don’t want to waste any more of my time, so get lost.”

“My, my, I consider this the most precious time, so I can’t do that, you see.”

Arina fetched the pillow that had been hanging precariously off the edge of the bed and placed it at the head of his bed. She even pulled the blanket from under his feet and showed the care of covering him up to his neck.

“Young Lord, do you remember how many years it’s been since we’ve had a proper conversation like this? It’s been a whopping ten years.”

“Perhaps you were hit on the head by a statue I threw previously, so you can’t even count numbers properly.”

“No, I’m precise. Because this is the first time we’ve ever talked so openly from the bottom of our hearts like this.”

Whether he acknowledged this point as well, he did not rebel as strongly as before.

Feeling awkward just standing like this, Arina cautiously assessed his mood and gently sat down on the edge of the bed. To avoid her, Lucius shifted slightly backward.

He stopped at a distance where they wouldn’t touch, yet where each other’s warmth could still be felt.

Arina released her divine power to the extent that she wouldn’t reach her limit, suppressing his demonic power which was flickering like a flame.

“You’re a hypocrite lost in self-absorption.”

At the rather shocking words, her divine power wavered greatly and then slowly subsided.

“Even though you’ve turned a blind eye to me all this time, now you suddenly want to pity and save me, but in the end, you’ll throw me away too.”

“I won’t throw you away.”

“Even though behind my back, you proposed an annulment just to avoid getting hurt yourself.”

No, how did he know that?

Holding her breath for a moment to hide her agitation, Arina suddenly strained her ears to footsteps coming from outside.

Listening closely to the outside sounds just in case, Lamian’s voice talking with someone could be heard clearly.

“What if that sly cat seduces our young master with her looks?”

“Then he’ll fall for it, won’t he? She’s the young master’s ideal type after all.”

“……”

Feeling like she shouldn’t hear anything more than this, Arina picked up the abandoned pillow and threw it toward the door.

With a thud sound, the outside went quiet.

I didn’t know the walls were this thin.

Or maybe it was because of a structure that echoed well. To call them thin, the bricks forming the walls looked quite sturdy.

“Well… since you heard, I’ll be honest with you.”

Knowing that hiding it for no reason would act as a poison, Arina comfortably spilled a part of her plan that she hadn’t told anyone else.

“A year from now, I’m going to leave the family and live a completely different life from now on. That’s why I brought the annulment notice in advance.”

“……”

Even if none of her goals were achieved, Arina intended to leave.

In any case, a year from now, the owner of the shell she was wearing would appear.

And since the fake would be ruthlessly discarded, she had to disappear from this place before the real one appeared.

“Before that, I plan to do everything I can and leave. When the time comes, I’ll naturally disappear from your sight, so don’t worry.”

“That’s just your plot to lure me in with such lies.”

“Whether it’s a lie or not, you’ll naturally come to know when that day arrives.”

With a creak— sound, the bed tilted to one side.

Every time she swallowed air, her windpipe and lungs stung. Her head grew dizzy from the suddenly dense demonic aura, and as her body staggered, her arm was firmly grasped.

“I’ll speak my mind this time, too.”

Unlike his fierce voice, the touch holding her so she wouldn’t fall was endlessly cautious.

“Ever since we first met, I’ve known that everything coming out of your mouth is a lie. So what you said just now, and whatever you say in the future, I won’t believe a single bit of it.”

Beneath his long-grown silver hair, the wounded beast’s eyes trembled finely.

Arina quietly gazed into those eyes and softly raised the corners of her lips.

“If that brings peace to your mind, then do as you wish.”

Lucius looked at her as if dumbfounded by her failure to even deny it, and then shook his head.

“…So what is it you want to ask?”

As he suddenly turned cooperative, Arina shifted her body a bit more to face him properly.

As if reacting to that, Lucius quickly pulled the blanket over his head.

He was probably trying to hide his hideous appearance. Even so, the horns protruding slightly above his head couldn’t be hidden.

Though it felt belated, Arina thought to herself that such things really grew out of a human body.

Could those be protruding bones?

Her fingers kept twitching due to the impulse to touch them.

But she couldn’t.

If she did, the demonic power she had managed to calm down would start churning again.

Honestly, even staying this close right now was a struggle. So she stood up slightly to put some distance between them.

At that moment, a hand suddenly shot out from behind and grabbed her priestly robe. Because of that, she flopped right back down onto the bed and blinked her eyes blankly.

“Those idiots might eavesdrop, so talk quietly right here.”

She had momentarily forgotten that the sound insulation wasn’t good. She rubbed the back of her neck, feeling ashamed of herself for failing to consider how he had locked himself away in a prison-like place because he didn’t want others to know his secrets.

“My consideration was lacking. I’m sorry.”

“Just say it quickly and get out.”

“Yes, yes.”

It was a conversation similar to before, but the fact that he wasn’t forcibly chasing her away carried a huge meaning for Arina.

Had he opened his heart just a little bit?

It would be nice if he did.

As she leaned into that vague thought for a moment, the truth of the bouquet suddenly flashed across her mind, and her elated mood sank straight down.